15 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Software Development Agency

The Questions You Need to Ask Before Hiring a Dev Agency

Hiring a software development agency is one of the highest-stakes purchasing decisions a founder can make. You are not buying a commodity — you are choosing a team that will shape your product's architecture, quality, and speed to market for months or years to come.

The problem is that most founders do not know what questions to ask a dev agency that actually matter. They ask about rates and timelines, get polished answers, and only discover the real issues after the contract is signed.

These 15 questions cut through the sales pitch. They are designed to reveal how an agency actually operates — not how it presents itself.

Questions About Their Process

1. What Does Your Discovery Phase Look Like?

Why this matters: Discovery is where requirements are refined, technical risks are identified, and realistic estimates are created. An agency that skips discovery is guessing at your project scope.

Good answer: "We run a 1-3 week discovery phase that includes requirements workshops, technical architecture review, wireframing, and a detailed project plan with estimates."

Bad answer: "Just send us your requirements and we'll give you a quote by Friday."

2. How Do You Handle Changing Requirements Mid-Project?

Why this matters: Requirements always change. What matters is whether the agency has a process for managing change without derailing the project.

Good answer: "We work in 2-week sprints. Scope changes are evaluated for impact on timeline and budget, discussed with you, and prioritized against the backlog. No surprises."

Bad answer: "We accommodate all client requests" (this means no process, and you will pay for it in delays and cost overruns).

3. What Does a Typical Sprint Look Like?

Why this matters: This reveals whether the agency has a repeatable process or just calls everything "Agile" without substance.

Listen for specifics: Sprint planning, daily standups, code reviews, QA cycles, sprint reviews, retrospectives. If they cannot describe their cadence, they do not have one.

Questions About Their Team

4. Who Specifically Will Work on My Project?

Why this matters: Agencies often present their best people during sales and then assign different developers to your project. You need to know who will actually do the work.

Good answer: "Here are the developers we plan to assign. Let me set up a call so you can meet them and review their backgrounds."

Bad answer: "We'll assign the best available team once the contract is signed." This means you have no idea who you are getting.

5. What Happens if a Developer on My Project Leaves?

Why this matters: People leave. The agency's ability to handle transitions without disrupting your project reveals organizational maturity.

Good answer: "We maintain documentation and code standards that enable new team members to ramp up quickly. We also cross-train team members so there's no single point of failure."

Bad answer: Silence, or "That hasn't happened before." It has. They just do not have a plan for it.

6. What Is the Seniority Level of Your Team?

Why this matters: A team of junior developers supervised by one senior architect produces very different results than a team of seniors. And some agencies bill senior rates while staffing with mid-level engineers.

Ask for specifics: Years of experience, notable projects, technical specializations. A good agency will share detailed bios or LinkedIn profiles.

Questions About Communication

7. How Will We Communicate Day-to-Day?

Why this matters: Communication failure is the top reason outsourcing engagements fail. You need to know what to expect before you sign.

Specifics to listen for:

Bad answer: "We'll be in touch regularly." Regular means nothing without a defined cadence.

8. What Timezone Are You In, and How Many Overlapping Hours Do We Have?

Why this matters: If you need real-time collaboration, a 1-2 hour timezone difference is manageable. A 10-hour gap is not. This is a practical question with a concrete answer — if they are evasive about it, pay attention.

For European companies, working with teams in the CET timezone ensures full-day overlap without schedule gymnastics.

9. Who Is My Main Point of Contact?

Why this matters: You need one person who owns the relationship — someone you can reach quickly when decisions are needed or problems arise.

Ideal setup: A dedicated project manager or team lead who is responsive, technically competent enough to translate between business and engineering, and empowered to make decisions without escalating everything.

Questions About Quality

10. What Is Your Testing Practice?

Why this matters: Testing is where code quality is enforced. An agency that treats testing as optional will deliver software that breaks in production.

Good answer: "We write automated unit and integration tests as part of development. Our target is 70-80% code coverage. We also do manual QA before each release, and performance/security testing for production deployments."

Bad answer: "Our developers test their own code." This means there is no QA process.

11. Can I See a Sample of Your Code?

Why this matters: Code quality tells you more about an agency than any portfolio page. If they have open-source projects, GitHub repositories, or are willing to share anonymized code samples, you can evaluate their engineering standards directly.

What to look for (or have a technical advisor review):

• Clean, readable code with consistent naming conventions
• Meaningful comments and documentation
• Test files alongside source files
• Separation of concerns (organized file structure)
• Error handling (not just the happy path)

Questions About Business Terms

12. Who Owns the Intellectual Property?

Why this matters: There should be zero ambiguity here. You are paying for the code — you should own it.

The only acceptable answer: "You own 100% of all code, designs, and deliverables created for your project."

Watch for nuance: Some agencies retain ownership of internal tools, libraries, or frameworks they use across projects. That is reasonable — as long as your product does not depend on their proprietary code that you cannot access or modify.

13. What Are Your Payment Terms?

Why this matters: Payment structure affects risk for both parties. Understanding the terms helps you manage cash flow and protect against non-delivery.

Common structures:

• Monthly retainer — Predictable, good for ongoing work
• Milestone-based — Payments tied to deliverables, good for fixed-scope projects
• Sprint-based — Pay at the end of each sprint based on delivered work
• Time and materials — Pay for actual hours worked, typically invoiced monthly

Best for most founders: Milestone-based or sprint-based payments. They tie payment to delivered work, not just elapsed time.

14. What Does Your Contract's Exit Clause Look Like?

Why this matters: Every relationship ends eventually. The question is whether the ending is planned and orderly, or chaotic and expensive.

Good terms:

• 30-day notice period for either party
• All code and documentation transferred upon exit
• No penalty fees beyond the notice period
• Defined knowledge transfer process

Bad terms: 12-month minimums, termination penalties, code withheld until final payment, no handoff process.

15. Do You Offer a Trial Period?

Why this matters: A trial is the single best predictor of long-term fit. It lets you evaluate real work, not sales presentations.

What a good trial looks like:

• 2-4 weeks in duration
• Working on a real (but small) part of your project
• Involves the actual developers who would work on the full engagement
• Clear deliverables and evaluation criteria
• Free or low-cost with no strings attached

An agency that offers a genuine trial is confident in their work. An agency that refuses one is worried you will see reality before signing a long contract.

How to Use These Questions

Do not treat this as a rigid script. Adapt the questions to your situation and listen for how the agency responds, not just what they say. The best agencies will appreciate thoughtful questions — it shows you are a serious client who values quality, which is exactly the kind of client they want to work with.

Scoring Guide

After your evaluation calls, rate each agency:

An agency that scores well across all categories — not just in one area — is the one most likely to deliver a successful project.

The Best Agencies Welcome Hard Questions

If an agency gets defensive when you ask probing questions, that tells you something. If they answer with specifics, offer proof, and invite further scrutiny, that tells you something too.

Ready to put these questions to the test? Talk to our team and ask us anything on this list. We will give you specific answers, introduce you to the developers who would work on your project, and offer a free trial engagement so you can see the quality of our work firsthand.